NATIONAL

Two weeks ago, on 28 June, dozens of refugees protested outside the Cape Town offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) demanding that three employees be fired. They claim that they have been
constant recipients of verbal abuse from the three employee

The family of man who died in a mysterious fire say people told them to go back to the Congo. Arthur Ilunga Wa Ilunga, a refugee from the Congo, burnt to death on 4 September 2016 at his home in Belhar. On that night, his wife, Chantal Meta, was away at a three-day workshop in Wynberg organised by the Deaf Community of Cape Town. But the couple’s 20-year-old daughter, Divine Kaseka, was at home the night her father died. She described what she remembers.

The Equality Court has ordered the Department of Labour to pay an asylum seeker his Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) benefits. The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has welcomed the judgment handed down by the court at the Vereeniging Magistrate’s Court‚ particularly as the Constitution prohibits discrimination based on country of origin.

Gateway Health Institute, a South African not-for-profit organization, is extending its services to LGBT immigrants seeking asylum in South Africa. The NGO, through its new LGBT Asylum Assist program, provides support to
asylum-seeking LGBT persons who have fled their home countries to resettle in South Africa.

Zimbabweans living in South Africa had their hopes boosted this week after some former refugees, almost in the same predicament as them, won the right to remain in South Africa for at least the next four years.

Squatting outside a tiny hut of sticks and dried grass in Kaseke, where she and her five children have been living for nearly 10 months, Feza Mwange recounted how her family narrowly avoided death in a conflict the authorities insist, against all the evidence, has been brought to an end. “We fled as the pygmies* arrived at our village to kill us,” Mwange told IRIN. “Our chief was killed the day after we left.

On the eve of the World Refugee Day on June 20, I fulfilled my yearly calendar of visiting the Anglican Church of Uganda refugee camp parish at Nakivale in Insingiro District. The parish has a priest who is a refugee and he has served in the position for 17 years. The parishioners are mainly Rwandans, Burundians, Congolese and apparently Ugandans who live at the edge of the camp or in some cases sandwiched between refugees. The camp
hosts other refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan and few Kenyans. The vibrant refugee worshipping community peacefully co-exists with the indigenous worshipping Ugandan community. The rather mixed congregation uses mainly Runyankore and Kinyarwanda plus a little Kiswahili.

More than 30,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are housed in two temporary reception camps, Kakanda and Mussunga, in Lunda-Norte province. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that about 500 refugees are arriving in these camps each day. Congolese citizens are continuing to cross the border to escape the current conflict in the Kasai region, which erupted in April last year.

INTERNATIONAL

As the present global refugee crisis continues to surge—with more than a million migrants fleeing war from not only Syria, but across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe—efforts to both explain and humanize the experience for young readers are proliferating on publishers’ latest lists. Gathered here are some recent and forthcoming titles—ranging from picture books to YA, fiction and nonfiction—related to refugees and their
experiences.

The final refugees to find asylum in the United States before the Trump administration’s travel ban rules come into effect are arriving in the country. The ban will close the doors on many of the most vulnerable, advocates say.